8 best crm systems for small business 2022

Zendesk is a powerful name in the business software market. Every one of its products boasts a fantastic array of integrations across a huge range of categories including analytics and reporting, e-commerce, email and social media, IT and project management, plus tons more.

The brand offers two main CRM products: Zendesk for sales and Zendesk for service. The former takes a powerful approach to sales monitoring and generation, but it’s the latter that really impresses us. It provides an all-in-one customer helpdesk solution with truly intelligent support elements designed not just to monitor client bugs, but also to analyse your performance when fixing them and identify the areas to improve.

As you can imagine, Zendesk also performs well for user support tools. Members at any payment tier can utilise a vast library of handy materials including onboarding and adoption resources, guided learning paths, and on-demand training courses. But it doesn’t stop at setup – if you do encounter a problem further down the line, you can also contact the platform for advice via email, phone and online 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

What type of small business is Zendesk for service best suited for?

If your business provides a specialist service, such as software development, and you get lots of phone calls from confused customers, then Zendesk service is the smart way to manage tickets and requests in one handy database.

The platform’s ticketing system allows users to record, organise, and track all your customers’ issues in one dashboard that’s accessible to your entire team, so you can keep a clear and up to date ticket pipeline.

Other features include:

• Triggers and automations
• Staff management
• Pre-built analytics dashboards
• Google Analytics for help centres
• Data exports

Pricing

Below, we’ve outlined the pricing information for both of Zendesk’s products. Both also have a 30-day free trial available if you want to try before you buy.

Zendesk for service:

The difference between Zendesk’s two lowest-tiered plans is minimal, however the Suite Growth plan, which costs around £26 more per month than Suite Team, does offer more workflow capabilities including multiple ticket forms and conditional ticket fields – ensuring you can provide a more bespoke service when it comes to support requests.

We think if you’re looking to grow your customer list then Suite Growth is the best plan to purchase.

 Suite TeamSuite GrowthSuite ProfessionalSuite Enterprise£ per month (billed annually)£39 per user£65 per user£79 per user£120 per user£ per month (billed monthly)£45 per user£79 per user£99 per user£159 per user

Zendesk for sales:

Sell Team and Sell Professional are the two tiers designed for small businesses. Sell Team is only suitable for three users, and works better as an organisational software for sales. You’ll find more opportunity-based tools with Sell Professional, which boasts integrations with email marketing software, as well as more powerful reporting tools.

Verdict

Customer support is an important service for any business to offer, however SMEs dealing with a long list of requests, such as software developers, should use Zendesk for a service, as a full-featured management tool with a large number of integrations.